If these companies can afford $trillions, then the government can collect some dues that can fund retraining programs or whatever.
And what are you retraining to? We've long abandoned serious manufacturing and mining. Most people's job is the application of knowledge and communication and LLMs are coming for them all. From retail and call centres through to doctors and lawyers.
We can't all retrain as plumbers, waiters and surgeons.
Cool. Let's start with taxing those, or any other place where they bury or hide from taxes. Thanks for the suggestion.
We can also tax on the numbers of job losses vs capital expenditures. IE: if you spend a $Billion on stuff while firing tons of workers, you get taxed more.
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As far as retraining: easy solution. Whatever people want to retrain to. The details will work themselves out. The important tidbit is to have large scale mass retraining if this really is the future.
It's not like the government forced me into my current job. I'm more than capable of choosing a new field myself.
And if YOU can't see the possibilities, them you don't have to take the retraining program. But from my perspective, there's plenty of work needed in the USA to improve our country. Plenty of problems to solve.
Taxes definitely solved that problem. And it even brought about the golden age of post WW2 US economy.
The correct taxes in the correct areas serve as an incentive structure to help encourage businesses and individuals to make good decisions. At least, that's what we did 80 years ago.
The US Government is at present (without any chances of this being fixed ever again) about the least efficient entity that exists on the Planet Earth and giving it more money will not solve any problem. It will be used though but one of the two political parties to win election(s) and kill any tax law that was previously put in place
if your family is running a budget deficit, there are two ways to mitigate it
- make more money (drive uber and pizza (at the same time to make double money at night) or get a higher paying job
- stop spending so much fucking money
it seems politically, the left-leaning part of the countries and political party will make you believe that we just need to make more money, give that money to the Federal Government and all our problems will magically disappear.
the right-leaning part of the country and its politicians will make you believe that rich already pay a lot more than most (they do) and that taxing corporations makes no fucking sense (it doesn’t in general).
neither party actually gives a shit about the fact that country is drowning in debt which will eventually be its undoing (those who study history know this as absolute certainty), they are just looking for where more votes are there to be had
On the technical side, perhaps none. But countless people in the labor movement spilled blood for their rights and dignity. Maybe something similar will be needed here, too.
